Simon Crean had been asking Kim Beazley to call him for weeks but the telephone just wouldn't ring. So, on Wednesday, Crean made the call himself and invited Beazley in to his Opposition Leader's office in Parliament House for a cuppa.

Beazley knew the way. Crean's office used to be his office, and there is a significant number of the ALP caucus who want it to be Beazley's office again.

Over a pot of coffee, the pair talked in detail about the Bulletin interview Beazley had given last month, which ignited the new round of leadership tensions. Beazley argued, as he has repeatedly done publicly, that there was nothing in the article that constituted a challenge to Crean's leadership.

They went through the story passage by passage, with Beazley putting the context of his thoughts in a benign construction. Crean believed what he heard.

But, somehow, at the end of the half-hour chat the two men left the office with small but important differences in their understanding of what had been said.

That they had met at all was always going to be a story after the you-said-you-would-call-me-but-you-didn't teenage theatrics of the preceding three weeks.

On Thursday, before his delivered his budget reply, his advisers quizzed him on what he would say if journalists asked if he had spoken with Beazley. "Well, I'll tell them the truth," he said. "I have spoken with him and I am very happy with the discussion."

As it happened, Crean wasn't asked that question until yesterday morning. "Just to clarify," said Sky News's David Speers. "Kim Beazley has told you in the past week, presumably, that he will not challenge your leadership?"

Crean: "Yeah, he's told me that."

Well, no he hadn't.

Beazley had said that nothing he told the Bulletin had constituted a challenge. He had said nothing about a future challenge.

They will meet again today in Perth, alongside John Howard, to greet returning Gulf sailors.

If Beazley has one message for Crean, it might appropriately be a suggestion to wake up and smell the coffee.